Reports

2017

Urban education systems around the country have implemented school choice policies aimed at expanding low-income students’ access to high-quality schools. However, true access to choice relies on dependable school- or parent-provided transportation. In this report, we review the available research on student transportation and profile transportation options in five choice-rich cities: Denver, Detroit, New Orleans, New York City, and Washington, DC. These cities vary widely in terms of providing publicly-funded transportation for students, prompting new questions on how student transportation can be an enabler of, rather than a barrier to, equitable access to high-quality education in urban areas.

2015

Teaching entrepreneurship—how to create, grow and run a business or organization—is one potential means to increase college and career readiness skills. Learning how to start a business can improve critical thinking, communication and collaboration (Gallagher, Stepien, & Rosenthal, 1992; Hmelo, 1998), which are key qualities for academic as well as business success. In this study, we examine the implementation of The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s (NFTE) Make Your Job Summer Program, a summer program designed to introduce students to the concepts of entrepreneurship while developing students’ academic and life skills. Specifically, the authors analyze the impact of this youth entrepreneurship program as it expanded to sites across the country and examine the program design, theoretical underpinnings, implementation, adaptations and challenges.

Teaching entrepreneurship—how to create, grow and run a business or organization—is one potential means to increase college and career readiness skills. Learning how to start a business can improve critical thinking, communication and collaboration (Gallagher, Stepien, & Rosenthal, 1992; Hmelo, 1998), which are key qualities for academic as well as business success. In this study, we examine the implementation of The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s (NFTE) Make Your Job Summer Program, a summer program designed to introduce students to the concepts of entrepreneurship while developing students’ academic and life skills. Specifically, the authors analyze the impact of this youth entrepreneurship program as it expanded to sites across the country and examine the program design, theoretical underpinnings, implementation, adaptations and challenges.

Each year in New York City, close to 80,000 middle school students participate in the ritual of choosing and applying to the City’s public high schools. Armed with the 600-page Directory of NYC Public High Schools and help from parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and community groups, these students rank up to 12 high school programs they would like to attend, choosing from nearly 700 programs at more than 400 schools citywide.

School choice policies aim to improve student outcomes by enabling families to choose, from a portfolio of options, a school that they believe will best meet their child’s needs. In New York City, choice and the development of a diverse portfolio of options have played central roles in the Department of Education’s high school reform efforts. These reforms have targeted both the supply and demand sides of the choice system. On the supply side, the DOE has closed underperforming schools and opened hundreds of new school options. On the demand side, the DOE centralized the school assignment process and provided students and their families with extensive information about their choices. While acknowledging the importance of and interaction between these two sides of NYC’s high school choice reform, this report focuses on the demand side, specifically students’ choices and placements.

The study attempts to explore how the PR’s methodology can more accurately assess the impact that each of New York City’s more than 400 high schools has on the diverse student population it serves. The goal of this study is to contribute to the rich and ongoing conversations that the DOE has welcomed since the PR’s first iteration and which have been critical to its significant improvements over time.

2010

Sean P. Corcoran in collaboration with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University

Value-added measures of teacher effectiveness are the centerpiece of a national movement to evaluate, promote, compensate, and dismiss teachers based in part on their students’ test results. Federal, state, and local policy-makers have adopted these methods en masse in recent years in an attempt to objectively quantify teaching effectiveness and promote and retain teachers with a demonstrated record of success.

But questions remain as to whether value-added measures are a valid and appropriate tool for identifying and enhancing teacher effectiveness. In this report, the author aims to provide an accessible introduction to these new measures of teaching quality and put them into the broader context of concerns over school quality and achievement gaps. Using New York City's Teacher Data Initiative and Houston's ASPIRE (Accelerating Student Progress, Increasing Results & Expectations) program as case studies, the paper assesses the potential for these measures to improve outcomes in urban school systems. In doing so, the author outline some of the most important challenges facing value-added measures in practice.

With its demanding requirements and assessments, its academic and international orientation, and its aspirations for admission to highly selective universities, International Baccalaureate has often been seen as an "elite" program: one for highly motivated, academically strong, and often affluent schools and students. Over the past few years, however, IB has extended its ambitions, adding into its 2004 strategic plan the mission of "impact through planned growth" and the particular strategy of "broaden[ing] access purposefully where we can have the most impact, particularly with disadvantaged students." In September 2006, IB North America (now called IBA1) was awarded an API grant, for $1.08 million over three years, to extend its efforts to broaden access and develop "support structures and services" for Title I high schools that are working to "be IB."

Supported by this grant, between January 2007 and December 2009 IB undertook an extensive effort to develop, plot, and refine a new model of structures and services to build a pathway that will connect from the Middle Years through the Diploma, as well as expand staff and students. Key components of this project have been: to increase scaffolding materials and leadership activities, to create a new coaching model and provide on-site coaches in schools, to offer new supports and training for guidance counselors, to develop backward mapping of curriculum from MYP through the Diploma, and to draw on the experiences and insights of other IB practitioners through an advisory working group. Simultaneously, IESP researchers have been engaged in an evaluation of this project at four pilot sites around the country, examining the design, development, and delivery of new support structures and services, and their implementation and impact in the pilot schools. This paper reflects the culmination of this work.

Urban Advantage (UA) is a comprehensive program, managed by the American Museum of Natural History, in partnership with seven New York City science-rich cultural institutions. Designed to improve scientific learning and investigation in middle schools in New York City, UA provides professional development to teachers, school administrators, and parent coordinators along with resources to schools, students, and families. UA takes advantage of the wealth of intellectual and institutional capacity available in the city and facilitates access to those resources for the city’s students. This report presents the first results of the study being conducted by the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University of the first five years of UA.